THE programme for Arsenal’s match against Blackburn Rovers on Wednesday night is sure to become a collector’s item, marking as it does the occasion on which Arsène Wenger’s team set a record of 43 unbeaten league games after a 3-0 win. It should also be one that Francesc Fábregas treasures, marking as it does the occasion of his own record-breaking first Premiership goal. It was scored from about a foot out, but it made him, only three months beyond his seventeenth birthday, the club’s youngest league scorer.
Moreover, it capped another astonishingly mature performance from the former Barcelona youth team player, who tackled crisply, was confident in possession and passed accurately, most notably when his through-ball to Dennis Bergkamp allowed the forward to set up Thierry Henry’s opening goal.
Fábregas’s name appears in the team listing on the back page of the programme, but he also features in the team photograph of the Arsenal academy squad — a reminder of how rapidly he has progressed. With Patrick Vieira injured, the Catalan teenager was put into the team that beat Manchester United in the FA Community Shield and has kept his place. And in Vieira’s programme column is a eulogy penned by the captain. “There are a lot of big players in our team, but I don’t think any of them was doing what Cesc is now when they were 17,” Vieira wrote.
Wenger persuaded Fábregas to join Arsenal in October rather than sign a professional contract with Barcelona after watching tapes and receiving favourable reports from scouts, whom he declined to name in case Spanish clubs get as fed up with him plundering their youth teams as French ones have become. “We have moved from France to Spain because we have taken everything in France that is takeable,” he said, joking.
But even Wenger is surprised by Fábregas’s progress. “He’s played three games (this season) and from a boy of that age you could expect one good game, maybe two, but in all the three he has been consistent,” Wenger said. “His workrate is outstanding, his commitment is outstanding and, of course, his football has been a joy to watch. In the first game he was up against (Thomas) Gravesen, who was one of the best players at the European Championships, in the second Ray Parlour and, on Wednesday, Tugay Kerimoglu, who has a lot of experience — three men — and every time he comes out of the game as he does, it’s amazing.”
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Fábregas has been called into the Spain Under-21 squad, but Wenger thinks that he could be ready for their full national side. “I’ve heard that before their last game they were thinking about him but preferred to put him in the under-21s because he would play more than ten minutes,” Wenger said. “For me, it’s not stupid to think that he could be called up to the first team.”
YOUNG GUN
Oct 28, 2003: Arsenal’s youngest first-team player v Rotherham United, Carling Cup (16 years, 177 days)
Dec 2, 2003: Arsenal’s youngest scorer v Wolverhampton Wanderers, Carling Cup (16 years 212 days)
Aug 15, 2004: Arsenal’s youngest Premiership player v Everton, Barclays Premiership (17 years 103 days)
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Aug 25, 2004: Arsenal’s youngest league scorer v Blackburn, Barclays Premiership (17 years 113 days)